Second Year review

Well... so that's it. End of the second year. It's been so long and so short at the same time. For sure, It's been much more intensive then the first year (especially with the group project), yet I feel like I could've done a bit more. Regardless, I feel really exhausted. Both physically and mentally. I haven't slept properly for a long time trying to prepare everything for the final hand-in, so now I should fall asleep and wake up in September... 

But  I'm not going to repeat my last year's mistakes of not doing anything game art-related for the whole summer. I have so much to catch up on, especially with 3d... I have to learn zBrush and CryEngine which I had really no time to learn being busy with other things. I'm aware that I'm going to need those skills in 3rd year. So in order to acquire them I'm thinking about setting up myself a personal project for this holiday. I've got few ideas and I still have to decide on which one I'll bring to life, but I'm already pretty excited about it. Beside of concepting, modelling and putting it into the engine I thought about documenting it on this blog, so I would (hopefully) get into the habit of regular writing (which I brutally failed at this year). I imagine this project to be a good warm up before the third year FMP.

But anyway, it is supposed to be a review of this year. As I mentioned before, this year was totally different from the first year. New place, new tutors, but also new challenges, more difficult and complex from those in the first year. Nevertheless, I learned a lot from them. I enjoyed most of the VD projects, especially those literature-related. They showed me the difference between drawing my own ideas from drawing things that were created in someone else's head. 

My interpretation of a character from The Witcher book

The game production projects were pretty fun too (well, they were not back then, but now with a smile on my face I recall how frustrated I was when I couldn't get the bin bag to look right). The biggest challenge of all was the group project. It showed me pros and cons of working on game related things in group. However, the overall experience was great, I was in an awesome group in which everyone was hard working but chilled out at the same time. We had no problem to get along and we had similar visions on how to make this project to work. 

Critical studies lectures this year were great too. The ones on writing cover notes, preparing portfolios etc. were really helpful and guest lectures were just priceless. They helped me to realize that these game makers are just humans like myself and if I work hard enough there's no reason why I could not work in a game company too. 

Also I believe that my time management this year was much better in comparison to the first year. I still need to learn how to be better organized though. Sometimes I had pretty hard time trying to find some of my files. I guess it would be easier if I wouldn't name my files like final, final_final, final1a, last_final, new_final etc...

Overall I'm happy with my progress in this year and I already I'm looking forward to the next one.